Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Yemen-based militant group, formed in 2009 by the merger of radical networks in Saudi Arabia and Yemen and linked to attacks in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and France.

After a series of deadly al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. and other Western targets in Saudi Arabia and Yemen between 2000 and 2004, militant Islamic networks in the region were weakened when a number of their local leaders were killed or captured by security forces. Islamic militancy revived in Yemen in 2006, however, when 23 al-Qaeda militants escaped from a prison in Sanaa. Two of the escapees—Nāṣir al-Waḥayshī, a ... (100 of 711 words)